Chinese New Year 2022: Who Is The Richest Chinese Man In The World?

Zhong Shanshan, the founder of China’s largest bottled water company Nongfu Spring and the majority owner of vaccine maker Beijing Wantai Biological Pharmacy Enterprise, is the richest Chinese man in the world.

The 67-year-old bottled water tycoon, who replaced Alibaba’s Jack Ma as the richest person in China, is worth $75 billion, according to Forbes’ Real-Time Billionaires List.

Ma only ranked fourth among the richest Chinese people on Forbes' list. He has a net worth of $37.1 billion. Ma reportedly lost his title as China’s richest person after the billionaire’s business empire came under regulatory scrutiny, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Zhong was born in Hangzhou, a city in eastern China, in 1954. He failed his college entrance exams twice in the late 1970s before enrolling at the Open University of China. He worked as a reporter in the 1980s before becoming a businessman.

The majority of Zhong's fortune is reportedly derived from his 84% stake in Nongfu Spring, which he founded in 1996. The beverage maker became publicly traded in Hong Kong in September 2020, as per Bloomberg.

Aside from the bottled water company, Zhong also has a 75% stake in Beijing Wantai Biological Pharmacy Enterprise. He owns the stake directly and through closely held Yangshengtang.

The medical products company began trading publicly on the Shanghai exchange in April 2020. According to reports, Zhong left the Wantai board in January 2021 due to personal reasons.

The Chinese man next to Zhong on the billionaires' list is Zhang Yiming, the founder of ByteDance, which owns news aggregation service Toutiao and the video-sharing app TikTok. He has a net worth of $59.4 billion.

The third richest Chinese man is Huateng Ma. He is the co-founder and CEO of Tencent Holdings Ltd., one of the world's largest internet companies. Ma has a net worth of $46.8 billion.

He Xiangjian is the fifth richest Chinese man on the billionaires' list, with a net worth of $32.3 billion. He is the founder and largest shareholder of Midea Group, China's biggest exporter of air conditioners.